Helping our guests feel welcome is as important as our cooking. And it is just as great a skill. Ever striving for excellence in hospitality, it is truly our restaurant family who has built Benihana's success.

Company History:

Benihana, Inc. owns and licenses restaurants in the Benihana and Benihana Grill chain of Japanese dinnerhouses. The restaurants specialize in an exhibition-style of Japanese cooking called teppanyaki. Customers sit around a communal table at which a Benihana chef slices their seafood, steak, chicken, and vegetables with lightning speed, grills their meal right in front of them, and then tosses it accurately onto their plates. The restaurants are decorated with Samurai armor and valuable art, and Shoji rice paper screens partition the dining areas. For the fiscal year ending March 31, 1996, the company had sales of over $81 million, an all-time high. By December 1996, Benihana operated a total of 49 licensed and wholly owned restaurants in 20 states as well as in Bogota, Columbia, and Aruba, Netherlands Antilles.

Early History, from Tokyo to New York

The founder of Benihana, Inc. was a 25-year-old Olympic wrestler from Japan named Hiroaki Rocky Aoki. He got his start in the restaurant business by working after school in his family's coffee shop in downtown Tokyo. His mother named the family business Benihana after a red flower that survived the bombing of Tokyo during World War II. Rocky was a scrapper, defending himself in the streets and schoolyards against bigger boys. He got hooked on wrestling, became a national university champion, and earned a place on the 1960 Olympic team. Although he didn't compete because he was over his weight limit, he did fall in love with New York when the plane stopped there on the way to the Games in Rome. That fall he left Japan for the United States.

In 1964, Aoki graduated from New York Community College's School of Hotel and Restaurant Management. During the summer he earned money driving the only ice cream truck in Harlem. The job was not easy, as he explained in an article in Management Review. "Every time I robbed, I get up earlier the next day and work later to make up. Every time I lose money, I get more challenge." With that philosophy, he managed to save $10,000 during the summer, which, along with a loan, was enough to start his first restaurant, Benihana of Tokyo.

Aoki's concept for his new restaurant, derived from specialty restaurants he knew of in Japan, was part entertainment and part food service. He wanted to offer Americans food they were familiar with, such as chicken, steak, and shrimp, prepared in a novel setting. He chose the teppanyaki table--a stainless steel grill surrounded by a wooden eating surface--where customers could watch a knife-wielding, joke-telling chef prepare and serve their food. His parents and brothers came from Japan to help him get started.

Unfortunately, New Yorkers equated Japanese food with raw fish and weren't comfortable sitting at a table with strangers. They ignored the midtown Manhattan eatery until the restaurant critic of the New York Herald Tribune gave it a glowing review. Suddenly, everyone in New York, including the Beatles and Muhammad Ali, wanted to sit around one of Benihana of Tokyo's four teppanyaki tables. Within six months after the review the restaurant had paid for itself, and Aoki quickly opened another restaurant in a larger, fancier building. The new location provided the same teppanyaki-style cooking but was decorated with valuable art, Samurai armor, heavy wooden ceiling beams brought from Japan by Aoki's father, and sliding Shoji...

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...restaurant with $10,000 earned from driving an ice cream truck in Harlem. The first restaurant, Benihana of Tokyo, was named for the red Safflower that was the name for the coffee shop owned by his parents in Tokyo.
Aoki's concept was for the meals to be theatrically prepared by a knife-wielding, joke-telling chef at a teppanyaki table surrounded by a wooden eating surface in front of the guests (Teppan meaning "steel grill" or "griddle" and yaki meaning "grilled" or "broiled"). It initially did not do well until early 1965 when Clementine Paddleford of the New York Herald Tribune gave it a rave review. The Beatles and Muhammad Ali were among the celebrities who then descended on the four-table restaurant.[6]
Within a year Aoki opened a bigger restaurant that featured Samurai armour, heavy wooden ceiling beams and sliding Shoji screens to provide some privacy.
In 1968 it opened its first restaurant outside of New York City in Chicago.
Aoki brought in consultant Hardwicke Companies (its founder Charles H. Stein was the original developer of Six Flags Great Adventure and also operated various New York restaurants including Tavern on the Green) as a partner to run the company in 1976. Aoki terminated the relationship in 1980 and settled a Securities and Exchange Commission complaint of insider trading of Hardwicke stock.
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Benihana of tokyo wac analysis:
The case benihana of Tokyo was simply about how to expand the business. Benihana is a service restaurant chain providing only minimal menu. The issue identified was they were unable to make a decision that how would they expand their business. They have some options waiting but its hard to make a strategy. It is a very difficult to expand a service nature of business because in service type of business everyone thinks he is a expert due to his practical observation. Another problem that one has to face in service is that the service is peculiar to each customer and that is what is extremely unfortunate. Another issue is that they are not targeting youth which has restricted them to larger markets and is not allowing them to expand in smaller markets.
Basically benihana is contributing to bring Japanese culture to America. It’s a steakhouse with a small menu with all its arrangements and decoration is depicting the Japanese culture. It was a concept brought by analysis of rocky who analyzed that American enjoy eating at exotic places so benihana is playing a role to bring a new unique culture by combining Japanese culture with a American touch. Their sitting plan was also unique as it was a hibachi concept in which food is cooked in front of the customers.
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BUSINESS SCHOOL
Cover Sheet for Individual Assignment: Case Study of Benihana of Tokyo
Your assignment cannot be returned to you unless you clearly print your name and address in the box below.
William Tan Wei Leng
Block 308 Canberra Road
#13-99 Singapore 750308
Name: William Tan Wei Leng
Student ID: 1656521
Subject name: Operations Service Management
Lecturer name: Max Zornada
Due date: 10 July 2015
KEEP A COPY
Please be sure to make a copy of your work before you submit it. On rare occasions an assignment gets lost in the system. In such a case you must be able to provide another copy.
PLAGIARISM
Plagiarism is the presentation by a student of an assignment that has been copied in whole or in part from another student’s work, or from any other source (eg published books or periodicals or internet sites) without proper acknowledgment in the text.
COLLUSION
Collusion is the presentation by a student of an assignment, as his or her own which is in fact the result in whole or part of unauthorised collaboration with another person or persons.
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1. -------------------------------------------------
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INTRODUCTION
–
BENIHANA
CONCEPT
Benihana
is
a
Japanese
restaurant
chain,
where
the
food
is
prepared
at
the
client
table,
by
native
chefs,
in
an
environment
decorated
according
to
Japanese
culture,
with
pieces
imported
directly
from
Japan.
The
concept,
based
in
cooking
at
the
client
table,
named
Teppanyaki
table,
allows
the
reduction
of
the
area
consumed
by
the
kitchen,
as
well
as
the
staff
costs,
while
increases
the
service
level
provided
directly
by
the
chef
to
the
customers.
This
process
is
also
important
to
improve
the
confidence
of
the
clients
in
exotic
food
as
well
as
adding
a
theatrical
dimension
to
mealtime
experience.
The
success
of
Benihana
depends
also
on
the
quality
of
the
prepared
dishes.
The
ingredients...